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Arun Prakash (left) and Shikker Raj Pillai Naval Air Station INS Hansa, Goa, May 11: Blessed are lives like Captain Shikku Raj Pillai's: fighter pilot, naval officer, a hero here this morning, the last on planet earth to land the Sea Harrier. Soon, this afternoon, he would formally hand over command of his squadron, the INAS 300 "White Tigers", to Captain Harshveer Singh. Harshveer is younger and flies the much younger MiG29K. Pillai is moving from Goa to New Delhi. He is delighted to be the hero today but his sunburnt features pale in contemplating the immediate future. As of...

The Indian Navy (IN) will bid farewell to its carrier-borne jump-jet the Sea Harrier on May 11 in Goa. It will be a nostalgic moment for those who were associated with this very distinctive fighter aircraft. When the navy's elegant, first-generation Sea Hawk fighter grew old and weary in the late 1970s, having proved its mettle in the 1971 war for Bangladesh, a search was mounted for a suitable replacement. Since most of the contemporary fighters were either unsuitable or unavailable, the future of naval aviation, and of our sole carrier INS Vikrant, looked bleak. Coincidentally, the Royal Navy (RN)...

NEW DELHI: They were always a sight to behold, a force to reckon with. Fighters landing vertically, akin to helicopters, with ear-splitting roars on a moving airfield despite being fixed-wing. It left even the usually phlegmatic Manmohan Singh slightly nonplussed during the "PM's day at sea" in 2006. Similar was the case of other politicians, before and after him, like A B Vajpayee and L K Advani. But the old must give way to the new. Ahead of the 56-year-old aircraft carrier INS Viraat's retirement later this year, the Navy has bid adieu to its eyeball-grabbing Sea Harrier "jump jets"...

Instead of retiring, former test pilot and real estate mogul Art Nalls imported, restored, certified and flew the world’s only private Harrier jump jet. Now he’s a man with a mission, adding to his fleet, he wants to preserve the Harrier’s legacy for decades to come. His amazing story is told in this awesome mini documentary from AARP studios: Art’s Harrier is an ex-Royal Navy Sea Harrier FA2. The Sea Harrier gained fame during the Falklands War, and continued to serve throughout the 1980s and 1990s, when it received the Blue Vixen radar and the ability to fire the AIM-120...

11 February 2011 Last updated at 07:16 ET Share this pageFacebookTwitter ShareEmail Print eBay removes Harrier jump jet over weapons ban Mr Wilson has previously listed four similar jets on eBay Continue reading the main story Related Stories Harrier jet on sale in Queensbury Bid for Harrier fails to take off A decommissioned Harrier jump jet has been removed from online auction website eBay after officials said it contravened their weapons sales policy. The outer shell of the rare two-seater T2 Harrier, a former museum exhibit, was restored by Bradford company Jet Art Aviation. Company director Chris Wilson said the...

Not long before the UK Royal Navy decommissioned the last British Aerospace Sea Harrier in March 2006, Maryland resident and aircraft mechanic Christian Vlahos received a phone call from a close friend. Art Nalls, calling from England, immediately got to the point. "He said, 'Christian, I want to buy a Harrier,'" Vlahos recalls nearly four years later. "I was like, 'As in, a 'Harrier'-Harrier?!'" As unusual as the conversation may seem, it was not entirely out of character for Nalls. A former US Marine Corps test pilot-turned-real estate-millionaire, Nalls has an eccentric streak. Not only had Nalls restored - with...

Royal Navy and RAF Harrier pilots face an uncertain future after the government revealed it is still reviewing the number it will retain following the decision to scrap the aircraft. The decision to scrap the aircraft was made as part of the Strategic Defence and Security Review in October, with the Harrier being taken out of service and numbers of Tornado aircraft set to be reduced. There are 135 Harrier pilots in the Royal Air Force and 53 in the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm. Responding to a question from New Forest MP Julian Lewis, defence Minister Andrew Robathan said...

Sea Harrier revived by ex-USMC pilot for air show circuit By Stephen Trimble Not long before the UK Royal Navy decommissioned the last British Aerospace Sea Harrier in March 2006, Maryland resident and aircraft mechanic Christian Vlahos received a phone call from a close friend. Art Nalls, calling from England, immediately got to the point. "He said, 'Christian, I want to buy a Harrier,'" Vlahos recalls nearly four years later. "I was like, 'As in, a 'Harrier'-Harrier?!'" As unusual as the conversation may seem, it was not entirely out of character for Nalls. A former US Marine Corps test pilot-turned-real...

No discussions have been held between Britain and France on whether aircraft carriers could be sent to defend the Falkland Islands, Armed Forces Minister Nick Harvey said. The Government "have not seen this as necessary", Mr Harvey said, despite the two countries recently agreeing to share carriers as part of a defence cooperation treaty. The deal raised concerns that the UK could be left without carrier strike capability if only a French ship was available and Paris decided it did not want to take part in military action that was not in its national interest. Defence Secretary Liam Fox conceded...

The highly-controversial cut to the Harrier force – condemned last week by several former heads of the service as "perverse" and risking "national humiliation" – was decided only three days before the final announcement of the defence review, sources said. Until then, the plan had been to scrap the RAF's Tornado fleet, the oldest strike aircraft currently in service. In a tense meeting, Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope, the First Sea Lord, told Mr Cameron that he "could not endorse as his military advice" the decision to axe the Harriers and considered it a "political, not military decision."

We knew it was only a matter of time until people started talking about the contested Falkland Islands in the wake of Britain’s decision last month to retire its Harrier jump jets, a move that will leave the United Kingdom with no carrier-borne strike fighters for roughly a decade. Now a group of former British admirals have written an open letter to U.K. defense officials, published in The Times newspaper, urging them to reverse their move to retire the Harriers. For the next 10 years at least, Argentina is practically invited to attempt to inflict on us a national humiliation...

Navy grounds Sea Harrier fleet after crash TNN 26 August 2009, 01:23am IST NEW DELHI: Navy has grounded its Sea Harrier fighters, which operate from the country's solitary aircraft carrier INS Viraat, as a precautionary measure after one of the jump-jets crashed last Friday. Sources said the Sea Harrier fleet, which is down to just eight single-seat fighters and three twin-seater trainers now, will undergo systematic checks to ascertain whether a "technical defect'' caused the crash off Goa, which killed the pilot, Lt-Commander Saurabh Chandra Saxena. Apart from the acute shortfall in the number of fighters to operate from the...

Flying the Sea Harrier: a test pilot's perspective By Craig Hoyle Royal Navy Cdr Nigel "Sharkey" Ward and the Royal Air Force's David Morgan gained their place in British military folklore by flying the navy's British Aerospace Sea Harrier FRS1 fighter with distinction during the 1982 Falklands War. Flight International's UK test pilot Peter Collins offers a rare insight on flying the "SHAR", having sailed south aboard the rapidly completed aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious as the combat action drew to a close. Freshly posted to Germany as an RAF Harrier GR3 ground-attack pilot, Collins was recalled to the UK after...

We’ve done it - again. After nearly 10 months of sweating, cussing, and prodding, XZ 439 made four successful takeoffs and more important - - four successful landings. Equal numbers of each, which is a good thing. The weekends of checking the systems, repairs, sheet metal work, and the endless gear retractions and extensions, plus the emergency gear extensions, all paid benefits. We had another Gas Turbine Starter (GTS) decide it was time to go on one of our taxi checks, but this time, we were better prepared. No chicken dances. We calmly and coolly extinguished the fire. No...

Hover and out Sandeep Unnithan December 27, 2007 It was past 11 on a warm Monday morning when Commander Janak Bevli’s Sea Harrier came to land on the tarmac on the naval air station at Goa’s picturesque Dabolim airport. It was not an ordinary fighter aircraft landing, Commander Bevli gently rotated the Sea Harrier’s Vertical/Short Take Off and Landing (V/STOL) thrust nozzles down towards the runway, bringing the aircraft to a gentle hover. Just then, the aircraft began yawing out of control. In a flash the experienced pilot yanked the twin handles of the Martin Baker ejection seat between his...

Half of Sea Harrier fleet gone in 20 years KP Narayana Kumar and Rahul Chandran New Delhi, November 26, 2007 When a Sea Harrier naval fighter aircraft crashed, killing its pilot, off the Goa coast in April, it appeared to be another tragic footnote to a string of isolated crashes involving India's fleet of combat aircraft. Not so, if you connect the dots. In the last three years, India, has logged at least 30 such accidents involving various fighter aircrafts. But, what was much more revealing about the April 6 crash, which killed Lt Commander Saurabh Tewari, was that it...

<p>The only privately owned Sea Harrier vertical/short take-off and landing fighter suffered a gear collapse when making an emergency landing at the US Navy's Patuxent River test centre after experiencing a hydraulic problem.</p> <p>This video footage posted by Nalls Aviation, the US owner of the ex-Royal Navy BAE Systems Sea Harrier F/A-2, shows the 11 November emergency vertical landing on the hover grid at Pax River in Maryland.</p>

A builder is celebrating after snapping up a model plane with a difference. Neil Banwell, 39, bought a full-size Sea Harrier Jump Jet on the internet auction site eBay for just £10,000. Father-of-three Mr Banwell from Wedmore, Somerset, has now given the 26-year-old fighter plane pride of place in his back garden. The Harrier Jump Jet XZ494, which would have cost around £35 million new, is believed to have seen action in the Falklands War, 25 years ago. Mr Banwell saw the plane, which has no engine, up for auction on eBay and decided to enter a bid. He said...

Indian Navy declines to buy British Harriers Indo-Asian News Service New Delhi, October 13, 2006 The Indian Navy has declined to buy eight British Sea Harrier FA.2 fighter jets that were phased out of the Royal Navy in March 2006. According to a report in the October issue of the defence magazine India Strategic, the eight Harriers, which were also the last to serve the Royal Navy, were on offer but without some vital components like missiles and the Blue Vixen fire control radar. The prime consideration was to use them to train pilots and to fill in the gaps...

Updated Ark Royal sails back to sea with new muscle SHÂN ROSS THE Royal Navy's biggest warship passed under the Forth Bridge and headed out for sea trials yesterday after a comprehensive £25 million refit to transform her into the service's only combined troop and aircraft carrier. HMS Ark Royal has had an internal refurbishment which will enable her to transport up to 600 Royal Marines to any flashpoint in the world. The impressive aircraft carrier is now considered "one of a kind" following the £25 million upgrade at Babcock's shipyard in Rosyth, Fife. The upgrade includes a third mast...